George Sand - born Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin (1804 –1876) - was a French novelist, memoirist and Socialist. One of the most popular writers in Europe in her lifetime, being more renowned than both Victor Hugo and Honoré de Balzac in England in the 1830s and 1840s and recognised as one of the most notable writers of the European Romantic era. She had numerous affairs with luminaries of art and literature and was one of many notable 19th-century women who chose to wear male attire in public. In 1800, the police issued an order requiring women to apply for a permit in order to wear male clothing. Some women applied for health, occupational, or recreational reasons but Sand, a rebel with a cause, was one who wore men's clothing without a permit because they were less expensive and far sturdier than the typical dress of a noblewoman at the time and was one of the first women to smoke cigars publicly. With colour and black and white illustrations.